Thousands of children in America live day-to-day moving from home to home, without the love and care of permanent families. November is National Adoption Awareness Month and as we celebrate all forms of adoption as a wonderful way to create or extend families, I would like to draw your attention to a very special group of children — right here in America — who desperately need families.

Today, more than 100,000 children are in foster care through no fault of their own as victims of child abuse, neglect or abandonment, and have been permanently removed from their homes. These children urgently need to move from temporary foster homes into permanent, loving, forever families. We aren’t talking about someone else’s children; we are talking about children in our very own Vermont. In Vermont, there are over 100 children waiting to be adopted.

The need has never been greater. Children often wait five years or more to be adopted, can move three or more times in foster care, and frequently are separated from siblings. And tragically, tens of thousands of children available for adoption turn 18 and leave the system each year without families.

So, we invite the community to learn; donate; adopt; and support the work of organizations like the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption that find children in foster care the forever families that they deserve.